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This section was my workspace for philosophy essays between July 2006 and April 2008.
I call this "Prehistoric Kilroy" because it gave me practice for more
disciplined essays in Kilroy Cafe.Also see my philophical blog and Twitter feed.

Issue #8, 8/23/2006

The Alien Metaphor

By Glenn CampbellFamily Court Philosopher

There is something in my past I am not not
entirely proud of. I had hoped to keep it
secret from the courthouse, but I can see that the
rumors are beginning to swirl. The true facts of
my background are probably being distorted, so I
think it is best if I come out of the closet.

I was once a UFO researcher.

As a child, I had a secret collection of UFO
magazines under my bed, and they were the source
of many illicit fantasies. I secretly hoped that the
aliens would take me away.

Later, when I felt more comfortable with my feelings,
I took special field trips. I went to the places
where encounters had supposedly taken place, and I
hunted for evidence. I recorded data. I developed
theories. I tried to find the smoking gun that
would prove once and for all that UFOs existed.

I never found it.

I must confess that I never had much interest in
the aliens themselves. Whoever they are, they're
not bothering us much. Sure, they may abduct some
of our women and perform unspeakable gynecological
experiments on them, but they always bring them back by
morning. By and large, these are low-impact,
non-interventionist aliens, and you got to respect
that.

Aliens, I realized at an early stage, were
NOT RELEVANT TO OUR LIFE ON EARTH. Yet still I
proceeded with the hunt. It was the pursuit that
interested me, not its outcome.

I am kind of embarrassed now that I spent so much
time on such a useless activity. Even if I were
to find them, it would have been meaningless.
Sure, I might prove they are here, touching down
occasionally at Area 51, but what am I doing about
the problems on Earth?

It is quite evident at this point that the aliens
aren't going to help us with our problems. They
seem to respect the "Prime Directive," which is
the Star Trek principle that you should leave well
enough alone.

Even if we are not alone in the universe, we are
still alone in dealing with our own problems. The
aliens aren't going to reorganize our society for
us or solve our child welfare dilemmas. The most
we can expect from them is to come here, take what
they want, then split, leaving us alone once again.

The one positive thing that I took away from my
UFO experiences is something I call the "Alien
Metaphor."

This is the notion that we are all aliens,
plunked down on this planet against our will,
inserted into bodies that are strange to us, and
struggling to get by in these bizarre
circumstances.

There is, in fact, a whole subculture of humans
who believe that they are aliens. I have met a
number of them. They can usually tell you exactly
what star system they came from, and sometimes
they want to break into Area 51 to catch the next
spaceship home.

A few, I am sad to report, have given up. They
know they don't belong here, but they also know
they are never going to get into Area 51. They
are just going to have to stay here, on this
troubled planet, trapped in this imperfect
body, grappling with all the mundane problems
other humans face.

"I'm married now," one alien told me. "I have a
kid. I just can't be dreaming these things
anymore."

I'm thinking, Welcome to the club!

The Alien Metaphor is another way of describing
existentialism. Human consciousness is something
fundamentally unexplainable and "alien". Sometime
around the time of birth, it is inserted into a
human body. From then on, the consciousness has
to deal with this strange body as though it were its
own.

If we begin to think after a while that our bodies
are "us", it is a delusion. We are all
fundamentally alien, or in the terminology of UFO
research "walk-ins".

A walk-in is an alien presence that has "walked
in" to a human body and taken up residence there.
This is especially disturbing if YOU are already
occupying that body and the alien is intruding on
your turf. You want to tell them, "Hey, I got here
first!"

You want to say, "This is my body!" Well, that's
not exactly clear. Yeah, it's the body you got
assigned, but do you really own it, or are you
just renting? I mean, if not for a few genes
switched around, you could have been occupying Mr.
T or Anna Nicole Smith. Pretty frightening,
eh?

The Alien Metaphor says that we will never really
know where we came from or who we are. We have to
make accommodations with our body and the planet
we landed on. We have to experiment and see how
things work. We have to do the best with what we
have.

There's not much point in breaking into Area 51,
because in all likelihood there aren't any
spaceships home. The funniest thing about this
whole cruel joke is that you will probably never
be rescued. You've been randomly assigned this
laughable body on this primitive planet, and now
you have to use it.